Aquila constellation
by Ore Ska
Summary: Altaïr. Malik. Kadar. Three lifes, three fates bound into a descent to the underworld, from which none of them will escape unharmed... Could have they avoid the worst? Maybe. Only if each one of them could have defeat his worst ennemy: himself... Rating [M]18 lime [Romance Altaïr X Malik]
1. Chapter 1

**Hey guys, this is my first fanfiction about the universe of the first video game "Assassin's Creed" (it is actually a french original fanfiction that I translated into English to share with more people, sorry for my bad english... If anyone would like to propose a better translation, go ahead!^^)**

 **The story takes place before the events of the first video game, and also concerns other previous events from the novel " _Assassin's Creed: the Secret Crusade_ " by Oliver Bowden.**

 **Welcome to an immersion in the past of the main characters as I imagine it, and the way things were going until the tragedy at the beginning of the first game. Hope you'll enjoy it.**

 **Each chapter will be provided by Altaïr's vantage point, then Malik's.**

 **Disclaimer : I do not own neither the Ubisoft's game, nor its characters.**

* * *

I remember very well Al Mualim's words when I officialy joined the Brotherhood. His speech had such an impact on me... It left an indelible mark on my life.

" _Don't ever take any decision lightly, Altaïr. Being an assassin is no as easy to handle as you seem to think... Each time you take a life, you also stain your soul with blood and choice. You carry always more weight on your shoulders. By continually stealing lifes, some men became insane_ ".

His speech left an indelible mark on my life... but not because of its truthfulness. Quite the reverse.

Al Mualim is the wisest man I ever known, but this time, he was wrong.

I've never been haunted by none of the existences I stolen. They just... vanished in the haze, at the moment the soul fled out from the body. They don't exist anymore but in memories. Harmless.

I do not fear the dead.

I fear the living. I fear his face on the horizon of my mind and sleep. I fear that storm inside, howling, roaring, taking control of my thoughts at the darkest hours, forcing me to embrace, in an endless torture, the memory of the mistakes I did, in order to atone for my sins forever.

If someone haunts me today, it is definitely Malik Al-Sayf.


	2. 1 ALTAIR

**ALTAIR**

* * *

 _"Someone admires you"._

 _"Huh?"_

I gaze at Malik. His own words (or rather what they reveal) seem to irritate him. He frowns his Vulcan eyebrows, pulling a face, showing his displeasure as always. The summer sunshine burns above, making his dark and silky hair glowing.

" _Not surprising. I'm the most talented, don't you think?_ "

I play with my knifes, swirling one of the blades between my fingers to prove what I just said, before throwing it to the black hooped straw target in the practise yard. The knife follows a straight course through space and time then hits a bull's-eye. I wish it could be a metaphor of my life... Rectilinear. Precise. Powerful. Without any digressions.

Malik has a scornful sniff; I didn't even aim at the target. My skills get him angry. He percieves that as an outrageous luck, he told me once, and remains convinced that things are bound to change.

 _"Stop being so arrogant"._

 _"Who is it? The guy who admires me"._

 _"It's Kadar"._

Ah. I better understand. Malik is a protective big brother. He surely doesn't like to see Kadar idolizing me... Especially since this pup gets such an enthusiasm.

 _"I tried to get it out of his mind_ " he says, throwing his own knifes. (The blades end up on the fly upon the target, almost in the center. Almost). " _So I'd appreciate if you could behave properly and reasonably, at least in his presence... I don't really want he draw inspiration from a half-assed model like you_ ".

I can't help shooting him a haughty look:

" _If he admires someone other than you, it's because you did wrong as his brother, didn't you?_ "

If a glower could kill, I'd be dead a dozen of times since the beginning of this conversation. And if it could only hurt, this one would be the final blow.

Malik is an annoying person. Always behind me –behind everyone– grumbling or finding some mistakes, even the imaginary ones, for the simple pleasure of correct it. Don't do this, don't do that, not like this, not like that, don't slouch, have a better aim, respect the creed, be polite, learn your lessons... I'd gladly tell him to clean his own mess before meddle in the others', if it wasn't already done. This neat freak is obsessive with his things; nobody could find him to be at fault.

I think there's a good reason. He's strict with himself in order to continualy improve over the days. A lot of people consider me as the most talented of our Brotherhood, but the truth is, Malik follows closely behind me... However, he doesn't stand for this tiny difference between us, this "almost", this eternal second role. Prehaps he'd realize his own value if he could look how far he has come, instead of how far he still has to go.

" _Come on, don't look so glum!_ " I say, hitting his shoulder.

" _Oh,_ s _hut your mouth and throw that knife already_ ".


	3. 2 MALIK

**MALIK**

* * *

My steps, echoing upon the cobblestones of the labyrinthine dephts, send me back some visions of the past. So many years in there, traveling all across Masyaf and its dizzy vertical hallways, inside that maze-like fortress, with a top touching the sky, melted into the clouds...

There is no other place where a man can enjoy such a panorama. From here, we can see beyond the world and maybe, convince ourself that all of this never existed –that nothing is true, that everything is permitted.

Al Mualim is waiting for me up there. He strangely didn't wish to summen me in his quarters as usual. However, sometimes our master just appreciate climbing the stairs to the very top, then beholding our creed under his eyes, among the rocky and iced valleys, from Masyaf to the distant horizon.

" _Malik... Come closer._ (He stares at the mountains without moving an inch, like he was drowned in the landscape). _I wish to give you a mission, but we'll discuss the details later. We haven't talked for a long time. You were born in this place, Malik... How old are you now?"_

 _"Twenty-three, master."_

 _"And how old is Kadar?"_

 _"Eighteen._ " (I give him a crooked grin). " _A little hothead, so enthusiastic, full of potential though. We just have to wait... He would be an adult before long_ ".

For the first time, Al Mualim drifts away from the landscape and turns towards me. So many hours deep in the citadel get his skin pale, adorned with age spots. The wrinkles in his face outlines the number of the years, in order to never forget how time flies, especially in your own reflection in the mirror. His eyes still sharp under bushy eyebrows, often frowned with severity, but fairness. A thick beard as white as the snow eats his rough cheeks...

The master is not so old, yet he has seen so much generations passed in front of him...

" _His apprenticeship will come to its end soon_ " he says. " _He'll make his dreams come true then, and use his skills to serve our Brotherhood_ ".

" _Gratitude. He would be honored_ " I anwser sincerely.

" _Tell me, Malik..._ " (His look drifts away gain. He seems to be very pensive today).

 _"Yes?"_

 _"Do you like to live here, in Masyaf?"_

 _"Of course"._

My answer comes without delay. How else could it be? I grew up in this place. My father was an assassin. My younger brother lives here. All our friends live here. We are supported in there by experienced people who instill values in our minds and give us a decent life, even though it's so easy, in this world, to sink into earthly hell.

" _I asked Altaïr the same question some time ago. Do you know what he answered?_ " (Al Mualim hesitates, then looks at me again). " _He said: I consider this place as my home_ ".

I see. Neither a yes nor a no. In short, he prefered to avoid the question...

Probably because he knew that the answer would be not what the master expected.


	4. 3 ALTAIR

**ALTAIR**

* * *

A hardwood box-spring marked by the countless generations of novices who came to lie here each night, in order to hand their souls over to that divinity called sleep. Some bed linen worn by its labor, moth-eaten, bleached by successive washings. The naked walls polished by time are bathing in shadows. They seem empty, yet they have gathered thousands of lonely thoughts.

It's not the same cell I occupied when I joigned the assassins; every room look the same though. Not even a single dissimilarity. Nothing to avoid the rush of memories each time I come here... That's why I dislike to sleep in it. That's why the dawn, or occasionally some member of our Brotherhood, find me such a lot of times lying on a roof, in a hay cart, or on the top of a tree, aiming for the night quiet under the constellation I bear the name of.

" _I'm sorry Altaïr_ ".

The reminiscence suddenly blows, as coruscant as the Creation itself. The memory of an emaciated face, more pale than a corpse, with deep shadows under the eyes, emptied of the desire to live. And the scarlet streams flowing out of his slitted throat...

Ahmad Sofian used to be an assassin, and the final accomplishment of his career was to take his own life.

" _I'm sorry Altaïr_ ". It were his sole words before disappearing into limbo. His last speech, to a teenager in state of shock, orphan since the day before, watching him bleed to death.

Thirteen years ago, during the first siege of Masyaf led by the Salah Al'din's forces, my father Umar Ibn La'Ahad failed in the mission given by Al Mualim and killed by accident some nobleman from the troops of the invader. As a peace term, Salah Al'din commanded to get the life of the murderer. I watched the head of my father rolling down at the gates of the citadel. Few days later, Ahmad Sofian, who was previously captured by the enemy and have confessed my father's name under torture, ended up taking his own life right in front of me, eaten up with remorse.

I was eleven.

" _I'm sorry too_ " I whisper to the pallid specter who stares at me with his eyeless sockets.

He was slouched against the door like the Christ nailed to his cross, with this unbearable red smile, more erubescent than innards, etching on his dead body the chalice of the penitent. Overwhelmed by the pain he caused and his suicide will cause. And I was standing paralyzed, crushed by the violence of the scene, seeing again and again my father's head rolling, Ahmad's throat cutted, the death surrounded the room in a vortex which couldn't let the mind sane...

I felt no fear. No pain. I was not myself anymore. I was out of myself.

From this moment... something has changed.

I realized. I realized that mankind, animals, and all living creatures in this world are assured to die; it is only a matter of time. We are breathing the Death. We're living by it and for it. We're seeping it out of our pores at each and every moment of our short and cruel and pathetic existences. A human being borns to die, and in this immeasurable, macabre dance, who lasts only for smithereens of eons, I've just figured out a way to transcend that everyone believes as a duality yet, instead of the two faces of the same coin.

I'll become the Death. A more powerful and perfect assassin than everything the Brotherhood could imagine or expect.

None of this was real. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.


	5. 4 MALIK

**MALIK**

* * *

" _As usual_ " I mutter. (The metal hose of the hookah between my lips makes my words unclear).

". _..what?_ "

His voice is spleepy. I give out some ethereal clouds of smoke, which are levitating in an hypnotic choreography to the ceiling of the room, filled with the smell of tobacco and our fierce night together.

Altaïr is tangled in bed sheets, lying on his belly. Dancing flames are emerging and dying on his naked skin at the pace of the flickering light, from the oil lamp hanging under an alcove.

His father was a native of Syria, but Altaïr has inherited the white skin and the light brown hair from Westerners –actually the sole thing his mother left to him.

" _Nothing_ ".

I meant: as usual, you care about yourself before any other people. He almost threw himself on me when I came back from my mission, and barely waited we were alone. Without even ask me if my job is done well. And, instead of greeting me, making hasty advances in a heavy silence, showing how frustrating his abstinence was, and ending up as often by an ardent fusion of our bodies...

Our rough daily life is made of that kind of scene.

"...'y _ou mad at me?_ "

I almost bolt up in the bed. His hand is upon my left arm. It goes up slowly along the skin and let on it a wake of shivers, as light as eagle feathers.

This hand has a missing finger; Altaïr cut it off himself in allegiance to the Brotherhood, in order to make a better use of his hidden blade.

Assassination is a path of pain. This place requires physical proof of it. Being able to kill more or less efficiently doesn't necessarily allow us to get the upper hand over other people... When we embrace this path, we let darkness and shadows go on our sides. Our curse is burned on our skin with a thousand of scars, cuts, scratches, grazes, wounds, scarifications and mutilations.

" _Leave me the fuck alone and go to sleep. You never listen anyway_ " I grumble.

" _Right now there are more interesting things to do than sleeping, if you see what I mean..._ "

I let out an irritated " _tsss_ " when I hear the double entendre.

" _Fuck you Altaïr_ "

" _Yeah, that's what I just said_ " he sniggers; I was hoist by my own petard.

Altaïr is hardly talkative, but at the rare moments he opens his mouth, he is pretty annoying. I wonder how we ended up sharing the same bed like this, him and I. There was a time when he used to be a very different man.

But I can't think about it any longer; the caress of his hand fade away. They leave my arm, my chest, and fall down to my crotch.


	6. 5 ALTAIR

**ALTAIR**

* * *

It's an union whose nobody can do without. For some, it brings dreams and promises of future. For others, it is nothing but an additional way to prove mutual feelings. For the rest –for me– it's an outlet. A drug.

Maybe my salvation.

The torment in me is only calmed down when we share an embrace. Those sole moments can briefly erase the misery of life and give me some ephemeral peace.

Our breath rythmically melted into each other. Our hands interlace. I feel like fire... Brutal tremors of desire make my hips waving. Before the old wood box-spring's eyes, which is creaking at the pace of the blaze consuming our bodies, thousands of passions as fleeting as this one are born and dead.

Nothing is visible nor audible in the heart of the citadel of Masyaf. The wind blowing in gusts out there, the rain washed up upon the ground, the words and thoughts of the rest of the Brotherhood; nothing can pass through the thickness of countless stone walls... This place is out of space and time. A room frozen in the Earth's core. A sanctuary where we are turning with the axis of the world.

I see Malik's back, bathed in sweat, arching and trembling as he moans some insults strewn with groans –of pain? of pleasure? Probably both, because pain and pleasure are not distinguishable anymore.

It was at Faheed Al-Sayf's death (Malik and Kadar's father) five years ago, that Malik and I discovered each other for the first time. We found each other to lighten the weight of our mutual burden. I think I should have already sink, just like a boat sinks to the bottom of the ocean, if I didn't live those moments when sound more real the efforts we make to simply exist.

An assassin borders on the death almost everytime. Yet, the death really came to me before I joigned the Brotherhood.

Death for honor... death by remorse... death for revenge... death by fear... In our macabre universe, souls are not reaped by oldness or disease, but by human feelings.

Our burning rut takes us away so high and far that it seems never going to subside.

I know a peaceful sleep is waiting for me after that. Those are the only one moments when I can find some rest. Otherwise, my night rovings corrupt, step by step, my thoughts by instilling into it that poison against nobody can resist, neither me nor the others... We have to settle for beholding its ravages.

Nobody... but Malik. Yet every time, the respite he gives to me is more brief than the previous one. I'm afraid that one day, it definitely get staunched.

We disappear in a fiery evanescence.


End file.
